The Dictionary of Human Geography

Comp. by: VPugazhenthi Stage : Revises1 ChapterID: 9781405132879_4_M Date:1/4/
09 Time:15:19:41 Filepath:H:/00_Blackwell/00_3B2/Gregory-9781405132879/appln/3B2/
revises/9781405132879_4_M.3d

Power and Sidaway, 2005; Walton-Roberts

and Pratt, 2005). The resulting post-colonial

notion of ‘modernity’ aims to reconcile the

often devastating impact that modernity has

on non-Western cultures and societies with the

progressive, emancipatory impulse also associ-

ated with modernity (seepost-colonialism).

Acknowledging that modernity has impacted

unevenly across space, the focus of these often

surprisingly modern investigations is chiefly

on the concrete negotiations that contextualize

adoptive or rejective practices locally in a

global setting. Gilroy’s (1993) studies of the

complex formation of a ‘Black Atlantic’ exem-

plify this strand of scholarship. The main

innovation of such work resides in its willing-

ness to break with a notion of linearity that

has characterized notions of modernity from

Descartes to Hegel (see Duncan, 2002). At

the same time, and in close analogy to other

attempts to broaden analytical concepts, any

gains achieved need to be measured against

losses in clarity, argumentative bite and

explanatory power: ‘broadening’ often also

entails elements of diluting argumentative

claims. In the case of ‘modernity’, with (as

we have seen) its already wide semantic field,

the abandonment of linearity carries the risk of

no longer being able critically to differentiate

if, or to what extent, societies (or elements

thereof) can meaningfully be compared

through the use of the conceptual apparatus

developed in conjuncture with the term ‘mod-

ernity’. In the absence of such comparative

yardsticks, how can scholars translate findings

from one geographical locale to another?

In fact, ‘translation’ may well be an apt term

to use within moderndiscourses. Transla-

tions have always posed quite fundamental

problems in that acts of translation tend to

reduce a semantic multitude to more circum-

spect and singular set of equivalences. Attrib-

uting modernity to this process at least has the

practical virtue of ensuring compatibility at a

relatively accessible point in an argument.

Traditional notions of modernity would, for

instance, have firmly placed practices associ-

ated with or emanating from ‘witchcraft’ as

being either pre-modern or outside the realm

of the modern by presupposing incompatibil-

ity between the two terms. The very thought of

‘alternative modernities’ (Gaonkar, 2001)

undermines this robust principle. By ensuring

that translation between different practices

can always involve or lead to a broadening of

categories or non-linear historical trajectories,

the notion of ‘the modern’ risks the loss of

normative aspects associated with modernity

as an emancipatory and, in the words of

Ju ̈rgen Habermas, an ‘unfinished’ project

(seecritical theory).

Arguably,manydebatescurrentlytakingplace

in the first decade of the new millennium labour

with precisely this point: the possibility of the

universality of modern dreams, aspirations and

normatively inspired practices. Can we think

of ‘modernity’ in the absence of pre-formulated

yardsticks, or clearly associated practices?

Whether we invoke the notion of a ‘clash of

cultures’, a re-investigation of notions of ‘toler-

ance’ or insist on established, modern norms

(especially in the legal context) in the face of

challenges, we are talking about modernity and

its survival into an increasingly less certain fu-

ture. Modernity may yet prove its most endu-

ring qualities by remembering its own inherent

insistence on the importance of the ‘new’. In

geographical terms, this ‘new’ translates into an

insistence on the importance not of preserving a

status quo but of constant experimentation and

improvement (Toulmin, 1990). In other words,

it involves a resolve to preserve and produce

alternative spaces of modernity, rather than

spaces of alternative modernities. us

Suggested reading

Berman (1983); Gaonkar (2001); Minca (2007a);

Venn and Featherstone (2006).

modernization Often conflated withdevel-

opment in general and Westernization in

particular, modernization describes processes

unleashed by the transformation of traditional

societies into capitalist ones or by their incorp-

oration through adaptation into an increas-

ingly globally operating form ofcapitalism.

If the former process is traditionally held to

characterize the transformative processes at-

taching to Western societies in the context of

the nineteenth century, it is the latter, non-

indigenous form of modernization that has

come to dominate the world since the end of

the Second World War. As such, notions of

modernization partake in discourses of the

evolutionary transformation of societies and

are often deeply implicated in notions of pro-

gress, growth, liberalization and thediffusion

of particular values. Up until fairly recently,

such processes of modernization were thought

to entail a clearly legible and oftenteleo-

logicalregister of changes in the economic,

cultural, social and political sphere of societies

undergoing transformation. Not so any more.

Initially criticized for being too narrowly

focused on economic forms of modernization

and for disregarding the many different direct

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_M Final Proof page 474 1.4.2009 3:19pm

MODERNIZATION